One ‍person is dead after an ICE officer on a large-scale ⁠immigration operation ​in Minneapolis shot dead a woman who allegedly “weaponised” ⁠her vehicle.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot the woman in her vehicle on Wednesday in a residential neighbourhood in Minneapolis, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

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“An ICE officer, fearing for ​his ‌life, the lives of his fellow law enforcement and ‌the safety of ‌the public, ⁠fired defensive shots,” McLaughlin wrote in a post ‌on X.

Mayor Jacob Frey alleged the officer “recklessly” shot her, adding immigration agents are “causing chaos in our city”.

“They’re ripping families apart. They’re sowing chaos on our streets and in this case, quite literally killing people,” Frey said at a news conference.

“They are already trying to spin this as an action of self-defence. Having seen the video myself, I wanna tell everybody directly, that is bulls**t,” the mayor said.

Dramatic escalation

A dark-coloured SUV with a bullet hole through its windshield and blood splattered ‌across the headrest was seen rammed into a pole on the snowy street where the shooting took place.

Venus de Mars, 65, a resident who lives near the site of the shooting, described seeing paramedics perform CPR on a woman collapsed next to a snowbank near the crashed car. Shortly ‌after, they loaded her into an ambulance that drove away without its sirens on.

“There’s been lots of ICE activity, but nothing like this,” de Mars said. “I’m so angry. I’m so angry ‍, and I feel helpless.”

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The shooting marks a dramatic escalation of the latest in a series of immigration enforcement operations in major US cities under the Trump administration.

The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul have been on edge since DHS announced on Tuesday it launched the operation with 2,000 agents and officers expected to participate in the crackdown tied in part to allegations of fraud involving Somali residents.

The shooting drew protesters into the streets near the scene, some of whom were ⁠met by heavily armed federal agents wearing gas masks who fired chemical munitions at the demonstrators.

A large throng of protesters gathered and vented their anger at the local and federal officers there. “Shame! Shame! Shame!” and “ICE out of Minnesota!”, they loudly chanted from behind the police tape.

The area where the shooting occurred is a modest neighbourhood south of downtown Minneapolis, just a few blocks from some of the oldest immigrant markets in the area and 1.6km (one mile) from where George Floyd was killed by police in 2020.

Al Jazeera’s John Hendren reported Minnesota Public Radio quoted a witness saying, “ICE agents were telling the driver, a woman, to get out of here. She was trying to turn around, and the ICE agent was in front of the car, and he pulled out a gun.”

The witness said “he [an agent] reached across the hood of the car and shot her in the face, like three or four times”. The woman’s vehicle then accelerated and travelled about 30 metres (100 feet) before crashing into a utility pole.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described the incident as an “act of domestic terrorism” carried out against ICE officers by a woman who “attempted to run them over and rammed them with her vehicle. An officer of ours acted quickly and defensively, shot, to protect himself and the people around him”.